Tag: mental health in the workplace

My scarlet letter is U

prettylittleleilaLeave a comment

Underachiever, underperformer

Hi, I’m Leila and I have ADHD, and this is a part of my story.

I was only diagnosed at the age of 35, and the reason I was diagnosed is because my psychiatrist couldn’t understand how I was having the struggles at work that I was having. The only answer was that there was something else impacting me at work. Like ADHD.

Woman with t-shirt with text that says "extra ordinary"
Me, newly diagnosed. “Sometimes I’m extraordinary, sometimes I’m just extra.”

That diagnosis was… life-changing.

After coming back to work, newly diagnosed and medicated, I sat down with my manager, and explained what I’d learnt about myself and ADHD, and how I could apply it to my work. And while she claimed to understand, and claimed that as a business they were supportive of me and my mental health struggles, they were still going to put me on performance management (a contradiction if ever there were one).

I met with our company’s mental health ambassador, who validated my belief that without accommodations, a person with ADHD (or any other mental health challenge), shouldn’t be measured directly against peers who do not have the same challenges, and if so, it would be unfair treatment. My manager, having misunderstood what it means to be “fit to return to work”, said that I should still be on performance management because I had returned to work. But legally, what “fit enough to return to work” means is that they don’t have to pay me 75% of my salary for an extended period of not working. It doesn’t mean that I’m not impacted by ADHD nor that they don’t have to provide me with the requisite accommodations.

Fast forward to 6 months later, and I have shown progress during the performance management period, and I am not dismissed for poor performance. (phew!) Should I have been on performance management for poor performance at all? No. Should they have provided me with accommodations, and then measured my performance for 6 months, and if there was no improvement, then put me on performance management, because then the assessment is fair? Yes.

Despite surviving performance management, the problem is that once you have been on performance management, you are branded as an underperformer, and then not only was I trying to prove my own performance (like everyone else), but I was trying to perform despite have challenges that my peers don’t struggle with, and having to repair my reputation on top of it all.

The plot thickens. After the performance management, I had an understanding manager who gave me accommodations for my ADHD, but then I was moved to a different team, and the leader of that team said that to get my accommodations I had to prove myself first, but to be able to prove myself I needed the accommodations. Once again, a misunderstanding of what accommodations were and why they are required for people with mental health challenges.

Accommodations are not unfair treatment – they are required to level the playing field. And yes, they need to be reasonable accommodations. And in my case, my request was for a half day, or a full day out of office to limit distractions, for emails to include a subject line indicating if it’s an action required or for information only and for my deadlines to be staggered. So not unreasonable. Sure, they didn’t want to buy my R6000 headphones, and that I accepted, but surely I should be able to get some kind of accommodation, or modification of my role?

Needless to say, without the accommodations, or consideration for my ADHD, I ended up on a final written warning a year later. Listed amongst the transgressions were misreading an email, and a pattern of missing deadlines and poor prioritisation, which, as I stated in my disciplinary discussion, are all symptoms of ADHD – and without support, my performance is unfairly measured by these metrics. In fact, I shouldn’t be measured on these metrics at all. But also, having been on performance management a short period before meant I was judged more harshly than my peers.

Fast forward a year later, once again, I survived the written warning. And after receiving ADHD coaching, and a leadership change, I was thriving. And I wish it was happily ever after.

The damage has been done, and despite all my efforts to improve my performance, with no support for ADHD, I have been branded as an underperformer, and even when I perform well, I am viewed through the lens of underperformer so nothing is ever good enough.

But I continue fighting.

Because a strength that many ADHD’ers have is resilience – it’s helped me get through both performance management and a final written warning, and I’m still standing and I’m still laughing and enjoying my life as best I can.

As far as the world has come, and as much as organisations are sharing about their mental health supports, we have a long way before mental illness isn’t stigmatized. What is important, though, is to know your rights, and fight for them. We don’t always win, but if we don’t fight, no one wins.

The symptoms of mental illness that no one talks about

prettylittleleilaLeave a comment
My illness is invisible, not imaginary

Even though it’s 2020, mental illness is still very misunderstood. Everyone who has low self esteem or feels nervous, has anxiety. Everyone who feels sad sometimes has depression. Everyone who is obsessed with having a neat desk is OCD. And everyone who cannot focus has ADHD. And not all thin women are anorexic.

But to actually suffer with mental illness is not as romantic as movies would have you believe. Every day is hard. Because every day, you are trying to function like a “normal” human being. And people assume that everyone with a mental illness has to look the same way. And that incredibly confident CEO could never suffer with bipolar, right? Although this is not a post about the difficulties of being on the mental illness spectrum. This is about those symptoms that we don’t talk about.

Laziness. Well, actually, perceived laziness. Sometimes people who suffer with mental illness struggle to complete tasks. And while you are motivated to complete tasks, you actually physically cannot for a number of reasons. Fear of failure. Perfectionism. Lack of motivation. Inability to concentrate. Sure, not all laziness is as a result of mental illness, but we need to start digging a little deeper when someone seems to be lazy and unproductive. It isn’t always as a result of lack of effort or desire.

Unemployment. Even though many companies will have mental health and wellness policies these days, and mental illness is starting to have its time in the sun, like wearing green on mental health day in October, when someone is actually suffering, and it’s affecting their work, it’s chalked up to poor performance. Especially in big corporate companies, poor performance is very rarely connected to mental illness. And a lot of the time, if we can give people the support and time to heal from mental illness, as we do with physical illness, we’ll improve productivity in our organisations.

Divorce/Singleness. Mental illness affects relationships. For many years, I suffered with undiagnosed anxiety, and a lot of disagreements between my husband and I were fueled by my negative outlook. I’d always been an optimistic person, and here was one of the closest people to me, telling me that he couldn’t handle my negativity. Now that we know about my anxiety and how it manifests, we are able to manage symptoms, and he is better able to understand me. But for many people, who suffer with mental illness, they struggle to maintain relationships, with romantic partners, but also friendships. We spend a lot of time in a vicious cycle of wanting to be social, but not having the energy to be social as a result of spending all day fighting mental illness to be perceived as a normal/likeable/successful individual.

Unidentified physical illness. I have a number of friends and acquaintances who have experienced random physical conditions like carpel tunnel, bowel and bladder issues, and other conditions. And most of these are directly related to their mental illness. Now, don’t get me wrong. Not all physical illness are manifestations of mental illness, and even if they are as a result of physical illness, they are serious, and need to be treated as such. But what needs to be done is treat the mental illness and not just ignore it, because, if we do, the physical illness will continue. Also, some physical conditions are caused by the excess of cortisol in our systems as a result of anxiety for example. We need to start viewing  the body holistically. The brain is an organ just like the heart or lungs or liver. And it can get sick just like those other organs.

Lack of confidence. I mention this separately, because a lot of people experience the symptoms of a mental illness, but with people who do not understand, they attribute these symptoms to be part of that person’s character. So we get labelled as aloof, or lazy, negative, aggressive. And if the person feels that this is not true to their character, there is the potential to feel unconfident and insecure in who you are. And if people don’t like you because of symptoms like your negativity, or perceived self-absorption, it can leave you wondering, what is so wrong with me? And then lack of confidence in abilities, because you can never do anything right because of unproductivity as a result of depression for example. Or not doing well at school or work, and wondering what it is about you that is making you so incapable of success, when it could possibly be ADHD that is affecting your work, as an example.

Failure. It goes without saying considering all the above, that people who suffer with mental illness suffer a lot from failure. Perceived failure sometimes as a result of impossible standards. Actual failure as a result of lack of productivity, or poor motivation, absenteeism, missed dealines etc. And that is the challenge, to separate the symptoms from character, and understanding yourself, to know where your symptoms are making you fall short, and what you can manage, and what you can change.

Ultimately, mental illness is an invisible illness, no one knows how much you’re suffering from the outside. They cannot read your thoughts, nor can they see the related emotional stress, or the physical tax mental illness takes on your body. But also, it is not clear how this invisible illness, which a lot of people don’t really understand, and cannot conceive of how it impacts your life, has these other impacts on your life, causing that vicious cycle of having mental illness, struggling, having it impact your life negatively, and thereby creating difficult life experiences which would impact anyone’s emotional stability, let alone someone who is already suffering.

Mental illness is complex. And while having a diagnosis can be liberating, operating in a world that doesn’t understand you and what that diagnosis means is difficult. And then the result of this lack of understanding is these “invisible symptoms” that do not appear on the DSM.

I am very open about my illnesses, and symptoms, and how they impact my life. And my husband has now gained more understanding so he has a better grasp of how my anxiety impacts both me, and our relationship. I have also joined a group at work to support sufferers and carers of mental illness, and my main objective of joining this group is to spread the awareness and understanding of mental illness, and how it impacts the working life of employees. The only way to counter these invisible symptoms that I’ve mentioned here is through knowledge, if you ask me. To have knowledge of ourselves, and our mental illness, but then also for non-sufferers, or carers to have the information to develop their understanding.